Tweed House RIP

Tweed House was social housing on the Limehouse Cut canal and the A12 in Poplar, East London. Tweed House’s decline was typical of most of the borough’s housing stock; it had been managed into the ground. After it was taken over by Poplar Harca in a stock transfer from the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, it was decanted, demolished and rebuilt, following a fairly typical pattern that is now the fate of many of our social housing blocks.

Tweed House in Poplar is a good example of managed decline pic: @balfronsocial

You can now rent a smaller 1-bed flat in the higher density re-development for £350 per week, that’s £1517 pcm.

Tweed House, originally pictured where Erno Goldfinger’s Glenkerry House was ultimately built.

Or you could always buy a part-share if you qualify to be eligible for “affordable” housing. Oh, and earn £60,000.

But look! Isn’t it shiny? And green.

Shiny and green: Yeoman Court. pic: @balfronsocial

Who has this sort of money? What kind of community do they envisage living here? One that is as soulless as the CGI imagery they decorate our streets with, somewhat familiar but distant at the same time, promising us something different so long as we don’t look too closely at the small print? This kind of greed is devastating our communities. Registered Social Landlords devour social housing and regurgitate poor-quality “luxury” flats to sell to overseas investors, and others take advantage to escape the heartbreaking damage they are doing to our communities and our city with their “regeneration” by renting out their homes for outrageous sums few round here are earning.

Is standing back and watching horrified as our friends and neighbours are evicted and decanted really all we can do?

A somewhat muted acknowledgment to Tweed House which provided proper social housing on this site for decades pic: @balfronsocial